Well I gotta give TPTB some props – at least they managed to last through 4 weeks before kicking the manipulation machine into high gear. But man, did they overcompensate this week – aside from Paula still at the bottom and Bindi still at the top, the scoreboard got all shuffled up this week. Alexa shot up from being 2nd from the bottom last week, to getting the high score this week and 4th place in combined scores; Carlos jumped from 5th place last week (and in jeopardy) to getting the 2nd highest score of the night and 2nd place with combined scores. Tamar went from being part of the 3-way tie for 2nd place, to being in 7th place after this week; and poor Alek, with two weeks worth of emotional trauma (and low-balled scores) under his belt, is now second to last. Andy managed to jump from 7th place last week to 5th this week, while going from straight 7’s and 8’s to straight 9’s. I will credit SOME of this drastic shuffling to some people getting switch partners that were much better at harnessing their talents than their original pro, while some ended up with pros that were worse than their original partner. And for the love of Jeebus, judges – be a little more understanding that it’s switch week. I get that you have an agenda, but it BLOWS MY MIND how you can talk about how the switch is so tough in one breath, and then dole out nitpicky critiques and lowballed scores in another. Thankfully, the double elim that we were hearing about for next week was a false alarm, and only one couple is going home next Monday – but last night’s scores do make me seriously wonder what the narrative is going to look like in the coming weeks.

I found myself agreeing with Maks far more than I thought I would – and I was particularly pleased that he finally called Allison out on her busy, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink choreography. Will be interesting to see if that comment is received the same way that Alfonso’s comment to Alexa was a few weeks back – although judging from Twitch’s twitter timeline, I’m guessing it’s not going to be received well. Also felt like Maks might have taken an interesting, subtle jab at the switch-up itself, when he told Tamar “You just got together this week, so you didn’t get to connect”. He wasn’t immune to the wonky-ness, though, and he gave a couple scores that made me raise an eyebrow. I do commend him on giving more coherent critiques this time – overall, I’d give him an 8 out of 10.

Other observations? I am very aware that Nick is a Backstreet Boy – therefore, I do not need to to see Nick doing the “Backstreet’s Back” move every week to remind me. This is the 3rd time it’s gotten thrown into a routine, and twice was enough for me – find something else for this guy to do. Was it just me, or did the first half of the show seem to be devoted to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it boner joke? Caught at least 3 innuendo-y moments. Also wish they would have kept Tamar in the outfit she wore for the intro dance – she looked STUNNING, and then they put her in that weird, feathery swan dress for her actual dance. No me gusta.

Since this is a ranking of who I think is most likely to stay or go (based on this week’s scores and last week’s), I’m half-tempted to do a “switch-up postmortem” tomorrow where I actually rank how well I thought the pros handled the switch, and maybe throw in a poll to see how you guys felt about it, too…would that be something you’re interested in? Read more..

Ok kids, the voting is *finally* over – and Heidi & I pulled together data from both Keyhole & Topsy last night to try and get the most accurate picture of who was going to be dancing with who. Based on what was said in the press release, the partnerships would be determined in order of who got the most overall votes (with all possible partnership hashtags), and moving down the line until everybody was paired off. We have a better picture of this for the female celeb/male pro partnerships – if I’m reading Heidi’s Topsy spreadsheet correctly, it looks like Meryl was the greatest overall vote-getter for the gals, followed by NeNe, then Amy, then Danica, then Candace. We don’t have quite as much data on the male celeb/female pro pair-ups, but if Keyhole is correct, that went in order of Charlie, Cody, James, & Drew. Based on that information, here are our predictions of who is going to be dancing with who:

UPDATE, 4/1/14 @ 10:02 PM EST: Well apparently all the tweeting you guys did was pointless, and apparently all the tracking and deciphering of vague rules we here at Pure did trying to give you guys some semblance of guidance was of NO WORTH WHATSOEVER…because Kristyn just dropped this bomb:

Draw your own conclusions, but I trust Kristyn & her source. So I could basically draw one big ol’ strikethrough every single word I’ve written over the course of the 4 posts I’ve done in this series, and eat the cost (both monetary & labor) of trying to track these hashtags…and worst of all, all that time you guys spent tweeting did nothing. I could literally cry right now – out of frustration and pure unadulterated RAGE. We did this to keep TPTB honest – to make sure they didn’t try to manipulate things in their favor. And what did they do? They gave all the viewers the middle finger, anyway. I have half a mind to tweet Sean Avery right now and see if we can formulate some sort of tell-all about the corruption running rampant through DWTS right now – I see that his claims of being booted off DWTS for fighting with Lord Conrad the Supreme are starting to gain some traction. I hope that man gets a venereal disease, because he is captaining the Titanic right now, with all the self-destructive changes he’s implementing. I hope some of the big outlets jump on this one. TMZ, you lurkin’? Holler at us – I’d be happy to send you copies of our data. Dateline? 60 Minutes? Hit us up and we’ll give you the straight dope. Damn, I don’t think I’ve been this mad about DWTS since they brought out the WTA cha-cha and threw Ralph out on his ass. Discuss, guys – feel free to vent. Lord knows I have… Read more..

So for those of you who had the “2.5 weeks” slot in the “How Far Into This Season Can Maks Last Without Saying Something Douchebaggy?” poll, congrats – you win the satisfaction of knowing that some people never change. 🙂 He dropped this gem on Saturday, probably not realizing what a slap in the face it was to every other male pro whose name is not Chmerkovskiy – and really, the use of the word “trust”? What do you think they’re gonna do, Maks? Steal her social security number? What he fails to realize is that Meryl trusted Derek before she ever met either of those Chmercocky brothers – and he’d probably be the one pro that you could count on to make sure Meryl made it through to the next week so that she could be reunited with you, Maks. But go ahead, please – keep throwing more fuel into the karma cloud already forming above you this season. 🙂

Anywho – I apologize for not dropping an update on you guys as I promised on Friday, but I got so wrapped up in closing out Q1 at work and then packing and heading down to Louisville ComiCon that I just ran out of time. No joke – I was in my PJ’s in my hotel room on Friday night, ready to sit down and write it up, when my lovely roomies came barging in with Manu Bennett (Slade from the tv series Arrow), Scott Wilson (Herschel from The Walking Dead), and Jon Bernthal (Shane from The Walking Dead) in tow, ready to do some Fireball shots. Needless to say, I got a bit distracted. 😛 That didn’t last long, though, because Heidi brought a rather disturbing observation to my attention on Saturday: whether TPTB intended it or not, this partner switch voting has been rigged in the Chmerkovskiy brother’s favor the whole time. Why, you ask? Because they’re counting tweets containing both Val & Valentin, and Maks & Maksim. While that may not seem like a huge deal, it does when you take into account that you can put both #DWTSMerylVal and #DWTSMerylValentin into a tweet and have it count as two votes, while putting #DWTSMerylDerek into a tweet twice will likely get it marked as spam. So potentially, every tweet that contains both variations of the Chmerkovskiy brothers’ names counts twice as much as a tweet with Derek’s name. Wish you all could see the chagrined face I’m making. I can’t decide whether or not it was done intentionally or whether TPTB are really and truly that stupid…I would say both are equally plausible. The problem is, we realized this too late, and there’s really no way for us to know just how much the two-name variation is affecting the hashtag tweeting. Heidi & I have an idea of how to normalize our data a bit, but it ain’t gonna be foolproof. But we already knew this whole partner switch was a clusterf*ck 😛

With about 12 hours to go in the voting (on the east coast – I think it’s 15 on the west coast), there are some tight races going on and some not-so-tight races going on – I would say that Amy’s partner has pretty much been determined, and Charlie’s as well; Meryl is currently been fought over by fans of two different pros; and the rest of them? Nobody seems to care. 😛 No, really – compared to the volume of tweets I’m seeing for Meryl, it’s as if the fans are going “Meh, whatever…they’ll get who they get!” to the rest of the couplings. And as I mentioned in the comments of my previous update post – if you’re using the same hashtag multiple times in the same tweet, it’s likely getting marked as spam; therefore, you’re better off doing a whole laundry list of couple switch hashtags in one tweet (i.e. “#DWTSMerylDerek #DWTSAmyMark #DWTSCharlieCheryl #DWTSBillyDeeSharna) than repeating the same one multiple times. Remember: you’re not only voting FOR your favorite pro to get a certain celeb (or vice-versa); you’ll also want to try and prevent another pro from getting your celeb (and vice-versa) by voting to pair them with someone else. That’s why I think those doing the multiple different hashtags in 1 tweet method are likely having more of an effect on the voting than those putting all of their eggs in one basket and only voting for one pairing.

And speaking of putting all their eggs in one basket: I think some fans are running the risk of leaving their pro to get “whatever’s leftover after everyone else has been paired” because they’re throwing all of their energy into one possible pairing which they have a very slim chance of actually getting. Might not hurt to start tweeting out hashtags for your 2nd & 3rd choices, kids – otherwise, don’t be surprised if a pro that you thought had a lot of clout ends up with NeNe. 🙂

Random interesting fact, courtesy of the awesomeness that is Keyhole: there are fans voting in the partner switch-up from as far away as Slovenia, Madagascar, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Algeria, Nigeria, & Peru. That’s pretty powerful, guys – when fans that can’t even watch the show live are tweeting to vote in the partner switch, you know it’s kind of a big deal.

Voting ends at 11:59 PM EST (Ithink), kids – so let’s finish strong and push those hashtags hard this afternoon & evening. I will try to stay up until midnight and see if I can put out a preliminary “partner-switch predictions” post, but I can’t make any guarantees – needless to say, I’m a bit sleep-deprived after my weekend in Louisville. For those of you curious about some of my antics – @putuincespence on Instagram. That’s all I’m gonna say. 😛

So the partner switch voting has been going on for 24 hours now, and some interesting patterns are starting to emerge from the data we’ve culled together on Keyhole (with some help from our gracious readers!). Before we get into it, though, let me emphasize: the goal here is not to alter the outcome of the partner switch by sharing info. Contrary to what one nutjob on the ABC boards thinks, we are not “conspiring & strategizing” in our private members area to “sabotage” the partner switch…Conrad & Co. are doing a great job sabotaging the show by themselves. They sure don’t need my help 😛 But hey, thanks for flattering me by implying that we here at Pure have a TON of power, random ABC board cretin – I think I’ll use my superpowers to go find that missing plane now, then maybe end the conflict in Syria and spoil the ending to Sunday’s Walking Dead season finale for all to see. BRB…

Anywho, the goal is just to see if TPTB are being honest with us about the results of the switch-up voting – that’s it. I really don’t care one way or another who gets paired with whom, because odds are that most of them are going to end up back with their original partners in a week or 2, anyway. So with that in mind, I would kindly ask that any of you doing hashtag analyses along with us NOT share specific results in the comments. I’ll share some broad, general details for how the voting is going, but I’m not gonna mention specific pairings. Gonna try to keep it as fair as I can, kids. Read more..

So with all the chaos this mysterious (and ridiculous) “partner switch” has created, there is one question I keep seeing the viewers ask: “So how do we know it’s not rigged?” Well, the short answer is “we don’t”; but it got me thinking – what if there was some way for us to measure the traffic of the various couple hashtags floating around Twitter, and see if TPTB were being honest with us about the results of the Twitter voting? Turns out, there IS a way 😉

It’s called Keyhole, and it’s a hashtag-tracking web app that allows you to enter in a specific hashtag and it will spit back all sorts of interesting data about that particular hashtag – how many times it’s used, how many unique users are tweeting it, how many other users that tweet is reaching, an hour-by-hour track of the rate that hashtag is being tweeted – it’ll even tell you from where in the world that hashtag is being tweeted, whether the tweeter using it is male or female, and all sorts of other cool data. If you guys want to check it out for yourself, you can sign up for a free 3-day trial here.

We’ve upgraded our account to one of the paid accounts so that we can track more of the hashtags, but we probably won’t be able to track them ALL (especially since we aren’t sure if the same-sex couplings are fair game or not). Wanna help us out? Go here and sign up for the free account (it’s free for 3 days, and they’ll extend it to 7 if you tweet about Keyhole when prompted) – we’ll get an extra free track for the referral, and you get 3 free tracks so you can check out some of the hashtag traffic yourself. If you’re interested in tracking one of the hashtags for us, you can contact us and we’ll let you know which hashtags we still need to monitor…there are over 99 combinations, if you include same-sex partnerships!

So what’s our goal here? We want to see just how the powers that be are determining these new partnerships – and see just how close (0r how NOT close!) the voting is. We will try to update you guys throughout the week with interesting observations we’ve made, but for the most part, we’re going to try not to actually influence the voting – we might tell you that the race for Meryl is neck-and-neck between two male pros, but we might not tell you which ones 😉 Hopefully, when voting ends next Monday night, we’ll be able to predict for you guys just who is going to be paired with whom. Should be a pretty cool social experiment, no? 🙂

Thanks to all who have already helped by creating referral accounts…you’ve made things much, much easier on these weary bloggers 😉 Need more details on how the switch up dance is going to go? Check out this post and this post.